wraggster
September 12th, 2011, 18:20
Despite the common preconception that digital distribution is detrimental to the health of bricks-and-mortar retail, GameStop International executive vice president Mike Mauler thinks there's a much bigger cross-over than many commentators believe.
"Retail globablly seems to be pretty strong, especially in the game industry. No matter what the economy is, no matter what the country is, if you’ve got a good game, it does well," he tells us. "In terms of where the industry’s going with digital, free-to-play etc, I personally don’t see it as cannibalistic. You’ll see a lot of articles giving the impression that a dollar spent on digital is a dollar lost from boxed product, and that’s absolutely not the case."
"I see it really as being additive, people are still spending on boxed product, new titles are doing well. Last fall Call Of Duty, Assassin's Creed and all the big titles did better than the year before. But then on top of it there’s now a digital piece. EA and some of the other guys are starting to take those franchise and do things on Facebook or browser games, and we really see it helping the industry."
According to Mauler, GameStop intends to have digital sales account for $1.5 billion of its revenue by 2014 (it was a little under $300 million last year), and he believes many of the increasing number of people being introduced to games through online social and mobile titles are also graduating to consoles - behaviour GameStop is hoping to capitalise on with the announcement of its gaming tablet.
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/gamestop-digital-good-retail-industry
"Retail globablly seems to be pretty strong, especially in the game industry. No matter what the economy is, no matter what the country is, if you’ve got a good game, it does well," he tells us. "In terms of where the industry’s going with digital, free-to-play etc, I personally don’t see it as cannibalistic. You’ll see a lot of articles giving the impression that a dollar spent on digital is a dollar lost from boxed product, and that’s absolutely not the case."
"I see it really as being additive, people are still spending on boxed product, new titles are doing well. Last fall Call Of Duty, Assassin's Creed and all the big titles did better than the year before. But then on top of it there’s now a digital piece. EA and some of the other guys are starting to take those franchise and do things on Facebook or browser games, and we really see it helping the industry."
According to Mauler, GameStop intends to have digital sales account for $1.5 billion of its revenue by 2014 (it was a little under $300 million last year), and he believes many of the increasing number of people being introduced to games through online social and mobile titles are also graduating to consoles - behaviour GameStop is hoping to capitalise on with the announcement of its gaming tablet.
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/gamestop-digital-good-retail-industry